Capital Craft 2019: A Beer chat with the Lagunitas Brewing Company okes

Lagunitas Brewing Company are one of the breweries who will be pouring their brews at the 2019 edition of Capital Craft Beer Festival on the 15th of June 2019. I recently had a chat to the okes behind it.

How did it all start for you guys?

It was Northern California 1993. Tony Magee started brewing on a stovetop homebrew kit and, after a couple batches, some stray wort had spilled down the back.

When Thanksgiving night came, and the wort caught fire and burned the turkey to a crisp, Tony’s wife Carissa kindly asked him to move his new hobby elsewhere.

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He moved into an old storage shed in the town of Forest Knolls, Calif. (next to the town of Lagunitas, which Tony thought had a cool-sounding name…) and he started brewing more and more. The beers ranged from vile and repugnant, to delicate and exceptional. And then came IPA, and he knew he could never go back. Eventually, Tony grew out of that space and moved just down the road to Petaluma, bringing his recipes and the Lagunitas name with him.

As the brewery grew, the tribe that drank the beer followed, and we expanded our zymurgicological reach into new territories and new beers.

One morning while driving from his home to the Petaluma brewery, Tony thought about his beer traveling to the other side of the country and realized how to get beer there fresher. The answer was: Chicago. With the help from some new friends in the Windy City, one year later our Pilsen-based production facility opened its doors and started brewing for Chicagoland and everything east of the Rockies. Back on the West, a Seattle brewpub followed soon after, with another in Azusa, Calif. on the way.

Now, Lagunitas beers are available in 20-ish countries and growing. And whether supporting local communities by turning beer into money for the cause, or simply fueling stories and songs with IPA and other fine ales, we’ve learned one thing (aside for how to cook a turkey)… Wherever you go: beer speaks, people mumble.

What is your favourite drinking song and why?

Any song that mentions beer! Or dogs. We like dogs. Or any blues tune.

What is your favourite quote about beer?

Our IPA is a unique version of an ancient style. A style as old as the ocean trade routes of the last centuries of Great Ships. Not as old as the equator they had to cross twice enroute, nor as old as the 10,000 miles or so of Di-Hydrogen Oxide and Sodium upon which they sailed, but older than the Circulithium-4 Lentoid that binds the Lupulin Quartnate onto your taste buds.

Weird. Think about it. Now stop. OK, go again. Now stop. Think again. And stop. But we digress. Made with 43 different hops and 65 various malts, this redolent ale will likely float your boat, whatever planet you’re on.

Which Lagunitas brew do you recommend and why?

IPA. IPA. IPA. IPA. IPA. And IPA. We don’t need a reason…

What can we expect from Lagunitas at the 2019 edition of CapitalCraft Beer Festival?

Killer IPA. And t-shirts and stuff.

I’d like to thank to okes from Lagunitas for this interview and I wish them all of the best at Capital Craft 2019. If you don’t have tickets for what might just be the social event of the year, get them HERE.

Watch this space for updates in the Events category on Running Wolf’s Rant.